"OHE" 2008 Obituary

O'HEARN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-12 published
Rising star of Canadian stage resisted the lure of Hollywood
Actress who got her start fronting a wartime Rinso Revue road
show, and was voted 'Miss Radio,' performed at Toronto's legendary
Crest Theatre and starred opposite the likes of Lorne Greene
By Noreen SHANAHAN,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- Mona
O'HEARN was an iconic forties actress who excited
audiences and showed great promise on the Canadian stage. Today
she is all but forgotten. What's left of her story lies in a
single suitcase with a broken clasp.
The suitcase, which recently emerged from storage, holds decades
of theatre programs, press clippings, fan letters and publicity
shots. It also contains obituaries marking the loss of such Friends
as Murray Davis and Mavor Moore, fellow thespians with whom she
shared a stage, a script or a sound studio.
The brittle, yellow newsprint, folded long ago by her hands,
scattered dust as it was opened. Here's Ms. O'Hearn, circa 1944:
"My real ambition is the stage, but I think I'd like radio, if
I could get a chance. Meanwhile, I'm plugging at a typewriter,
holding down a stenographic job I don't care for." And here's
a clipping from a few years later, "Meet Mona O'Hearn… devastating
proof that Toronto girls are yum-yum!"
But in her life and career there was often a great divide between
simple ambition and "yum-yum." She was a shrewd, intelligent
woman and a strong advocate of Canadian theatre. Although tempted
by actor Friends Leslie Nielson and Lorne Greene to head south
to Hollywood, she opted to remain behind to work at the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation and Toronto's Crest Theatre, as well
as supporting the fledgling Canadian Actor's Equity Association.
"She's enthusiastic in defence of the underdog in matters of
social, racial and political ideas," reads another clipping.
"One of her pet themes is a National Theatre for Canada."
Mona O'HEARN grew up in Toronto during the thick of the Depression.
After her father, Tom
O'HEARN, left home early each day to work
as a sign painter, Mona practised monologues in front of the
hall mirror and gave the rest of her family hell for getting
in her way. She was an angry, opinioned young woman during a
time when success required social conformity and the right shade
of lipstick. She often locked horns with her mother and sassed
her siblings, while her father quietly tended homing pigeons
in the back yard. "She was always a rebel," reflected her brother,
Ray O'HEARN, 60 years later.
Ms. O'HEARN began acting at East York Collegiate Institute on
Cosburn Avenue, and in amateur productions. In 1940, after graduating
from high school, pressures to get a desk job meant life with
a Dictaphone rather than a microphone. But her ambition soon
lifted her out of that rut. She took up modelling between secretarial
gigs and, times being what they were for beautiful young women,
she ended up signing her name on some pretty bizarre contracts,
such as posing for steamy 10-cent comic covers with titles such
as: "Murder - Straight Ahead" and "Fatally Yours." Another time,
due to a shortage of manpower during the Second World War, she
glued on a thick white beard and played Santa Claus for the cameras.
"This is how Santa is transformed into a pin-up girl," the caption
said.
In 1942, she served as emcee and flashed some thigh with the
Rinso Revue, a travelling road show sponsored by a detergent
manufacturer that billed her as an expert in domestic science.
"This-is-the-way-to-wash-your-clothes was a necessary part of
her performance," commented a Medicine Hat reporter. "But she
made of the work-a-day, soap-and-water part of her 'turn,' a
lively adventure." She won the dubious honour of being named
by a shipload of sailors as "the girl they'd most like to stand
beside the microphone with."
Although unmarried at this point and reputedly a terrible cook,
her wifely persona landed more acting jobs in popular Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation radio dramas, including playing opposite
John Drainie in the long-running serial John and Judy. She also
starred in Soldier's Wife, Canada's top-rated daytime program.
According to one reviewer, she learned to be a "tearful little
expert" in such roles. "Just to please the feminine members of
the listening audience."
It's also possible that her tears expressed an ache for more
serious roles. She later acted in a radio dramatization of Mazo
De la Roche's The Building of Jalna, catapulting both herself
and the novelist to greater fame. "I expect more of you as an
actress," said Ms. De la Roche at the time.
In 1946, Ms.
O'HEARN won "Miss Radio," a nationwide popularity
contest for Canadian radio artists. She was noted queen of the
airwaves during a time when families sat around the voice box
or read one of the numerous radio magazines. With this success
under her belt, she shifted into more theatre. In 1948, she and
Lorne Greene co-starred in Dora Mavor Moore's production of Joan
of Lorraine, at the Royal Ontario Museum Theatre, a role earlier
made famous on Broadway by Ingrid Bergman.
"Sadly, career pressures took their toll on Ms.
O'HEARN around
this time," said her friend and colleague, Laddie Dennis. "To
alleviate stress, she spent afternoons sipping cocktails at the
Celebrity Club on Jarvis Street, conveniently located across
from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation building.
It was a habit that soon developed, she added. "[Drinking] was
the other half of your life. There was a tension that came with
this kind of a career… the first thing you'd think about was
'let's all go have a drink.' "
In 1949, realizing she was an alcoholic, Ms.
O'HEARN began sobering
up and married Ed
PARKER, a journalist from Winnipeg who fell
in love with her during an interview for the Montreal Star, and
who would later found the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto.
Within a year or two, her real life sharply contradicted her
acting performances. Far from being a domestic wizard, she found
the roles of marriage and motherhood beyond her scope. Within
days of the birth of her son, Josh, in 1951, she had a nervous
breakdown and was hospitalized for several months.
"Her career diminished after I was born," said Mr.
PARKER. "
She
drank until my birth and then, because she wasn't self-medicating,
she started having breakdowns." Mr.
PARKER has few good early
memories of his mother. His parents split up when he was 2 and
he never lived with her. Ms.
O'HEARN was diagnosed with a manic-depressive
disorder and struggled with the condition for the rest of her
life.
Although she was still deeply loved and respected by a score
of Friends and colleagues, Ms.
O'HEARN continued to create havoc
in personal relationships. Ms. Dennis recalled asking her to
be maid of honour at her 1949 wedding. Ms.
O'HEARN arrived an
hour late. "There she was, white-gloved, flowered hat, and late&hellip
an example of the unpredictable and charming Mona
O'HEARN."
Meanwhile, against all odds, Ms.
O'HEARN's career did not fade
away altogether. In fact, it prospered during the 1950s and 1960s.
She joined up with Mr. Drainie in a 1951 Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation radio drama of W.O. Mitchell's Jake and The Kid,
featuring stories set on a Saskatchewan farm. And then, in 1953,
she once again co-starred with Lorne Greene at the Royal Alexandra
Theatre in The Big Leap, a play about a man who tipped himself
over Niagara Falls in a barrel. In 1959, she acted with Martha
Henry in Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You at the Crest
Theatre, a venue that had marked the beginnings of indigenous
commercial theatre in Canada when it opened five years earlier.
One of her most memorable roles was in Sean O'Casey's The Plough
and the Stars. Staged by Equity Showcase Theatre at Toronto's
historic Arts and Letters Club in 1960, and produced by Ms.
O'HEARN,
it told the story of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.
On opening night, however, the greatest scene occurred offstage.
Ms. O'HEARN's young son watched his mother's performance, but
unfortunately nobody had adequately warned him that she would
be shot. When he saw blood pool around her body, he became inconsolable.
"I was 9 and to me that translated into a real death," recalled
Mr. PARKER. "I flipped out."
In the seventies, less work began to come her way. Although she
continued to perform in small television roles and on stage as
late as 1993, most of her time was spent as a voice and drama
instructor.
Meanwhile, she and her son always had a fraught relationship
that didn't improve with age. Although Mr.
PARKER recognized
how she was "sharp as a tack," he knew she poisoned many social
environments and cost them both a great deal of grief. Even late
in her life, she was tossed out of retirement homes because she
was unable to get along with other residents. Mr.
PARKER once
told her that she had to start treating people nicely.
"I'm a tough businesswoman," she responded. "I can't change just
like that."
"Mom," he said. "You are a great actress. Embrace the role!"
In 1996, Ms.
O'HEARN moved into Toronto's Performing Arts Lodge
in Toronto, a residence that provides residential facilities
for senior or disadvantaged people who made their careers on
the stage or before the camera. There, she mingled with other
actors with whom she had once shared the limelight, and Friendships
developed. "She had the ability to call you darlin' - just once
- and you'd melt," said a friend.
Mona O'HEARN was born April 18, 1922, in Toronto. She died on
March 6, 2008, in Toronto of emphysema. She was 85. She is survived
by her son, Josh
PARKER; her grandchildren Yvonne, Noah, Tatiana,
and Edan; her brothers Roy and Jim
O'HEARN; and her sisters Lillian
DURNHAN, and Joan
LADOCEUR.